Generally hearing screening or hearing test methods that allow the hearing loss of an individual to be tested are well known in the art.
Perhaps the most widespread method is based on pure tone tests, where the individual to be tested (i.e. the test person) is presented for a tone at a specific frequency and at first at a very low level that most probably is not audible for the test person, where after the level of the tone is progressively increased until the test person indicates that the tone is audible whereby the hearing threshold may be established, and from that the hearing loss at that specific frequency as compared to normal hearing subjects may be derived. In order to fully characterize the hearing loss the test may be repeated for other frequencies in the audible range.
This type of test has been offered as online test for many years. Hereby individuals that suspect they may have a hearing loss can take the test at home and without having to make an appointment and travel to a hearing care professional.
However, this type of test requires relatively precise calibration of the electro-acoustical output transducer applied by the test person.
Another widespread approach for estimating hearing loss is based on the test person's ability to understand speech. This type of tests is generally known as intelligibility tests. Often interference noise is superposed onto the speech because hearing impaired people often find it particularly difficult to understand speech in noise.
However, this type of test is characterized in that the required feedback from the test person is somewhat more complex than just indicating when a tone is audible because the user feedback typically requires a visual display where a number of words or sentences are given for selection by the user. The methods for estimating a hearing loss based on the achieved intelligibility scores are likewise relatively complex. An additional complexity for this type of test, especially with respect to using them on-line, stems from the fact that they are language dependent. Furthermore this type of test is relatively time consuming.
These types of test are also characterized in that they are quite sensitive to the level of background noise while performing such a test.
It is therefore a feature of the present invention to provide a hearing test system that can provide an improved hearing test.
It is another feature of the present invention to provide a hearing test that is relatively insensitive to calibration of the acoustical output.
It is yet another feature of the present invention to provide a hearing test that is language independent.
It is still another feature of the present invention to provide a hearing test that is simple to carry out for the test person.
It is another feature of the present invention to provide a hearing test that is relatively insensitive to the background noise level while performing such a test.
It is a feature of the present invention to provide a hearing test that may be carried out by the test person in a very short time.